CYCLONE ROCK Dom’s face-off with the Coney Island roller-coaster ended in a draw.

NEW YORK — There are about 300 people here, it's 94 degrees, and Worcester's finest lo-fi frontman is singing about his cat beside a roller-coaster.

Dom the band are the opening act of the this past Saturday's 10th-anniversary Siren Festival — a free, all-day concert funded by the Village Voice (disclaimer: my employer) that takes place annually on Coney Island. The main stage sits beside a rattletrap puke monster called the Cyclone, so while the band's long-haired ginger brat-punk namesake sneers, somewhat proudly, about things like burning bridges, his kitty Bochicha, and the way living in America is "soo sexxxxxxxy," his main competition is the ride's CHK-CHK-CHK-CHK.

Three hours later, Dom and his guitarist Cosmo are backstage drinking rider-supplied Budweiser, playfully squirting folks with a Super Soaker, and trying to recall just how the hell they got here. It began this past New Year's Eve, Dom explains, when he went to a "really wack" party, saw his ex-girlfriend kiss his friend, went home, "broke a bunch of shit," at some point took ecstasy, and then wrote a song about coping with the experience that the Internet has come to know and to love as "Jesus."

First Fader noticed, then other music blogs, and "then I just decided, 'Hey, I love this attention. Let's write some more songs, boys.' " Dom met Cosmo at a honky-tonk night in Brooklyn this year; Cosmo has since become one of those boys.

Dom figures, if none of this had happened, he'd probably be scraping his bowl for resin somewhere in Massachusetts. Speaking of which: strangers keep approaching the pink-shirted slacker and shouting out random cities like Grafton. But Dom, who says he's moved around all his life, isn't sure how much his year-old Worcester residence matters. "I guess your environment is conducive to what you create æsthetically, but it's not really too important. I mean, you can write some pretty good books in prison."

Worcester rock city When I first saw the gooey-inked hand-screened sleeve of the Golden Girls’ recent Ultimate Freedom EP, not only did I get that stirring, satisfying feeling that it had come straight from unsound minds confined to some DIY basement workshop, I also sort of got the creeps. But I think that’s only because they’re from Worcester.

Dom | Family of Love After writing and recording most of his debut record in Worcester bedrooms with DIY sweat,beat-up paisley guitars, old Casios, and computer programs, this time he's upgraded to a proper studio session with producer Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Björk), experimenting with a "dial tone solo" and Fun Machine keyboard.

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Out: Good times a’Bruin It was the first time the Boston Phoenix hosted an awards party for its 23-year-old Best Music Poll, but what erupted June 15 at Brighton Music Hall was a drunken shitshow that honored decades of Boston rock and roll, and was capped off by the Bruins' first Stanley Cup championship since 1972.

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